Scranton, PAMario, an Iraqi war veteran, was hit by artillery shell in Kuwait and seriously injured his spine. “I considered myself lucky, the two guys with me didn’t make it,” he says. “But all these years later I’m still suffering thanks to this Medtronic Infuse Bone Graft.”
Mario, age 48, was thrown backwards from his vehicle and shattered the lower four vertebrae and coccyx (tailbone). He was flown back to the US for surgery and remembers signing a waiver, which agreed to any prosthetic device implant. “I remember the VA doctor telling me this cage they were inserting, along with some nuts and screws, was made by Medtronic,” says Mario. “He explained that I was having a bone graft along with other pieces of hardware.”
Although he made a good recovery, Mario was discharged; he was deemed unfit for combat duty after the accident. Instead the US postal service hired him as a mail carrier for the next 17 years - until Medtronic complications set in. He could feel the hardware moving and clunking in the center of his chest but had to wait almost a year for the VA to schedule surgery.
“From 2007, I have been taking morphine and oxycontin three times a day,” says Mario. “Immediately after the surgery I knew something was wrong. My first surgery took 10 hours but this one took almost 12 hours. The first thing the surgeon said when I came out of the anesthesia was, ‘We did the best we could but we had to leave a screw in place in the left side of the last vertebra. We couldn’t remove it because it would have been a paralysis risk.’ I spent three weeks in recovery at the VA hospital and was simply discharged.
“But this second surgery has caused all kinds of complications and I didn’t even know they were related to the infuse bone graft until I saw something on CNN.”
Mario says that he now understands why he is getting short of breath. Before the surgery he didn’t have any respiratory problems. “All of a sudden I find myself almost hyperventilating because I can’t get enough air and it just comes out of nowhere,” he says. “My surgeon explained that the alloy in the Medtronic parts is damaging nerve tissue - not only in my spine but in the surrounding areas, including my lungs.
There is a condition called thoracic outlet syndrome that mimics these exact same symptoms. But there has to be significant nerve damage with this syndrome to qualify for surgery. In the meantime, I am being treated conservatively - with physical therapy and exercise.”
Three months ago Mario was told by the chief surgeon at the VA hospital that he couldn’t have surgery to correct any broken hardware. He has x-rays and CT Scans showing the defective hardware and saw a patient advocate for the VA, but he is still waiting for a definitive answer.
Meanwhile, Mario cannot leave the house without a walker. He is now 100 percent disabled and is collecting social security, probably for the rest of his life. “This early retirement is as devastating as the pain Medtronic has caused,” Mario adds. “I was put out to pasture by the postal service six years ago and haven’t worked since. Because the VA isn’t helping, my only hope may be a Medtronic Infuse lawsuit.”
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